Oregon Ducks desperate to push pace against Cougars

LOS ANGELES -- For the Oregon Ducks, what better place to push the tempo than here, where filling the lanes is a daily occurrence.

After slogging through two lopsided losses to Washington State in the regular season, the Ducks desperately need a quicker pace in tonight's opener of the Pacific-10 Conference tournament at Staples Center.

Easier said than done against the Cougars, who lead the nation in scoring defense, allowing 55 points per game.

"Trust me, Coach (Tony) Bennett needs no assistance from me," Oregon coach Ernie Kent said when asked how his team can manage to get the pace of the game more to its liking against the Cougars (16-14, 8-10 Pac-10).

The Ducks (8-22, 2-16) failed to crack 20 points in the first half in each of the first two meetings between these two stylistic opposites, which WSU won by a combined 41 points. Oregon shot a combined 30percent in the games.

Following the Ducks

What: Pac 10 Tournament

When: Wednesday, 8:30 p.m.

Where: Staples Center

On the air: TV on FSN; radio on KXTG (95.5)

The Lowdown: Both teams need to win four games in Los Angeles to reach the NCAA Tournament. That task seems slightly less impossible for the Cougars, who have beaten the Ducks twice and have also won at UCLA, which awaits the winner of this game. ... ... Washington State is 4-9 all-time, and 2-1 against the Ducks, in the Pac-10 tournament.

If there is a similarity between the teams, it's that both are playing better than they were when they last met on Feb.12 in Pullman, Wash. The Ducks got their first two conference victories before dropping two in Los Angeles last week, and the Cougars have wins over Arizona, Arizona State and UCLA, along with a close loss to Washington, in the past four games.

"They're playing better basketball," Bennett said of the Ducks. "They're dictating tempo, speeding people up."

Of course, there's speeding people up and then there's stopping people once they're going.

"If we don't defend, we'll be back home real quick on Thursday," said Kent, who admitted his Ducks don't match up very well with Washington State. "They're going to be a handful for us. We're going to really have to do some things to keep them off-balance."

Oregon did just that at home against Oregon State on March1, blitzing the Beavers for 51 points in the second half. The Ducks made their shots and Tajuan Porter pushed the ball at every opportunity. But the Cougars are different -- they don't stretch a zone defense over the full court, and they have a space-eating big man in Aron Baynes, who will have a personal dunk-fest if the Ducks take too many chances.

Baynes was a non-factor a year ago when Washington State built a 20-point, first-half lead and beat the Ducks 75-70 to open the Pac-10 tournament, after two regular-season wins over Oregon.

Kent, who was ejected from the Cougars game in Eugene this season (for the first time in 12 seasons as Oregon coach), has the best tournament record among active Pac-10 coaches at 10-4 (.714).

The Ducks won the tournament in 2003 and 2007, and those two titles tie UCLA as the most since the event was revived in 2002.

The common denominator in those two championships: dominant point guard play. It was Luke Ridnour in '03 and Aaron Brooks in '07. The Ducks have sputtered there this season, with Garrett Sim and Kamyron Brown -- so much so that power forward Joevan Catron could lead the team in assists, and Porter has had to assume more point guard duties.